US Politics

The battle to bring back the federal right to abortion in the US hinges on much more than just the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and winning will require proponents to be as organized and steadfast as their opponents, at least as one of the reproductive freedom movement’s most veteran voices sees it.Invoking scenes that played out all across the country after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision eliminated nationwide abortion rights, Merle Hoffman recently said: “It looks like thousands of people marching in the streets all over the country … [But] you can’t just do one action.“The pressure has to go, and go, and go.”Hoffman, 77, positioned herself at the forefront of the American reproductive freedom movement decades ago, when she helped open one of the US’s first abortion centers in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City two years before the supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision established the national right to the procedure.Hoffman recently spoke to the Guardian about how Democratic control of the White House and one of the congressional chambers has offered little resistance to Republican command of the judiciary, which allowed the supreme court’s conservative majority to overturn Roe.She believes that gaining back the ground lost since Dobbs was handed down in the summer of 2022 requires more than just voting for pro-abortion candidates.“That’s one aspect, yes,” Hoffman said.But, given that the federal levers of power are divided among the two political parties, and the procedural blocks that one branch of government can leverage on another, “don’t assume – please don’t assume – that as soon as these people get into office, they’re going to put Roe v Wade right back,” Hoffman said.“They can’t.”Hoffman highlighted how little federal-level Democrats had done to protect abortion access with Joe Biden in the White House and a slim majority in the Senate since Roe v Wade was overturned.Biden has been unwilling to pursue an expansion of the nine-seat supreme court to add liberals to the bench and better balance its 6-3 conservative majority. Meanwhile, with control of the House and Senate split by thin margins, Congress has not been able to enact national protections for reproductive rights through legislation, creating a confusing checkerboard where abortion is nearly completely banned in 14 states.Hoffman had a hand in founding Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights shortly before Roe fell, with the aim of galvanizing popular opposition to abortion restrictions.She said the thousands who participated in mass street protests in cities across the US – including Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago – then and since have had the correct approach. And she complimented the energy younger advocates brought in organizing those events and similar, unrelated ones when unrest over Roe’s fall was at its highest.But Hoffman said such demonstrations have all but vanished in terms of size and intensity as other major events, including the Israel-Gaza war that erupted in October, have taken up the progressive left’s attention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoffman acknowledged that some believe street protests and walkouts in schools and workplaces have a limited effect within the current structure of power in the US. But she said she steadfastly believed enough actions like that, sustained over an adequate amount of time, would convince those in power to side with the majority of Americans who favor abortion rights over opposing special interests.She said reproductive rights supporters could also do more to advocate for the movement by contributing time or money to efforts aimed at improving healthcare for women who do want to have children.Meanwhile, Hoffman said, women who have had abortions but have chosen to remain silent because of the social stigma could help break that stigma by speaking up about their experiences and decisions.She likened it to LGBTQ+ people “coming out” about their sexualities, and how supportive that can be to members of their communities who feel shame and guilt in silence.“There’s an abortion closet,” Hoffman said. “The first thing you can do is come out.”Hoffman said it was perhaps most important to realize that truly taking back what was lost to Dobbs would take decades. That’s how long it took opponents of reproductive rights – as well as like-minded judges and lawmakers – to plot the seeds for the historic decision to end the right to abortion in the US.“This is a generational struggle,” said Hoffman, echoing the central point in her recent book Choices: A Post-Roe Abortion Rights Manifesto. “This is going to pass from me to the next generation to the next generation.“The opposition is extremely, extremely … relentless. They’re persistent, they’re creative – and they won’t stop until there is no abortion in this country.” More

The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has pulled within four percentage points of frontrunner Donald Trump in New Hampshire’s 2024 Republican presidential primary, a contest which could prove closer than expected for the ex-president, according to a new poll.In an American Research Group Inc poll released on Thursday which had asked voters whom they preferred in the New Hampshire primary scheduled for 23 January, Haley earned 29% support to Trump’s 33%. That meant the gap between Haley and Trump was within the survey’s 4% margin of error after the former president had long held dominating polling leads in the race for the 2024 Republican White House nomination.Haley’s strong showing in the American Research Group Inc survey came a day after a poll from the Saint Anselm College New Hampshire Institute of Politics found she had doubled her support in the state since September, seemingly cementing her as a clear alternate choice to Trump for conservative voters. The Saint Anselm survey’s findings were more favorable to Trump, however, showing him with a 44% to 30% lead over Haley.But while Haley still has ground to gain to take the lead in the state, Trump coming in at less than 50% support “shows he has serious competition in the party”, the University of New Hampshire survey center director, Andrew Smith, has previously told USA Today.Haley’s strong poll showings appear to have drawn a mixed reaction from Trump, who is separately contending with more than 90 criminal charges as he seeks a second presidency.On one hand, he went on his Truth Social site on Friday and insulted Haley with his preferred nickname for her, writing: “Fake New Hampshire poll was released on Birdbrain. Just another scam!” He additionally spoke with rightwing radio show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday and dismissed the polls showing Haley performing well against him as “fake” and insisted he was untroubled by her as a potential primary contender.Yet citing two sources familiar with the conversations, CBS News reported on Friday that Trump had also simultaneously been asking his team about tapping Haley to serve as a vice-presidential candidate if he eventually wins the Republican primary to be the 2024 Oval Office nominee, which if accurate would be a sign that he covets capitalizing on her support. CBS said its sources had indicated the far-right reaction to a Trump-Haley ticket has been negative, however.Haley for now has been touting her recent polling performances.“Donald Trump has started to attack me,” Haley said at a campaign town hall on Wednesday in Iowa, where the caucuses that customarily kick off presidential election years are scheduled for 15 January. “He said, ‘I don’t know what this Nikki Haley surge is all about.’ Do you want me to tell you what it’s about? … We’re surging.”Haley was the US ambassador to the United Nations after Trump won the presidency in 2016, but she resigned in 2018. Prior to that, she was governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017.One of her more prominent acts as South Carolina governor was signing into law a ban on abortion which contained no exceptions for rape or incest. That ban took effect, along with similar ones in other states, after the US supreme court last year eliminated the federal right to abortion which had been established by the landmark Roe v Wade decision.Trump, for his part, faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of trying to forcibly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.He has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump more recently has been on the defensive against resurfaced claims that he kept writings by Adolf Hitler – the Nazi leader who orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust – by his bed.Academics, commentators and political opponents have been quick to link Trump’s recent remarks that certain immigrants were “poisoning the blood of” the US to rhetoric used historically by Hitler, Benito Mussolini and other authoritarian world rulers.“I know nothing about Hitler,” Trump said to Hewitt on Friday. “I’m not a student of Hitler.”He then implied having at least some familiarity with Hitler’s sayings in regards to purity of blood.“They say he said something about blood,” Trump told Hewitt. “He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way. It’s a very different kind of statement.” More

Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, who is challenging incumbent president Joe Biden, will keep running his long-shot bid for the White House through the summer after he’s had more time to introduce himself to voters across the US.Phillips initially planned to run in a few states for his party’s presidential nomination, focusing especially on the crucial early-voting state of New Hampshire, which was seen as a trial balloon for his candidacy. But now, Phillips told the Guardian in an interview, he is aiming for a much longer campaign.By the summer, Phillips wants to compare head-to-head polling between him and former President Donald Trump, and Trump and Biden. If Biden fares better in the matchup, Phillips would support him. If Phillips fares better, he believes Biden should throw his support toward the congressman.“Those are my intentions, and I think those should be the intentions of every Democrat. Let’s find the candidate best positioned and most likely to win,” Phillips said.Phillips’ bullishness about his odds – and his strong belief that Biden will not win against Trump again – have kept his campaign in motion. The congressman, buoyed up by a personal fortune from his family’s distilling company and a gelato brand, hasn’t been deterred by the Democratic machine backing Biden. So far, Phillips has been his own main supporter, injecting $4m into his own campaign.As the New Hampshire primary nears next month, Phillips is feeling good about his chances there. Biden isn’t on the ballot in the state because national Democrats altered their calendar to put more diverse states earlier in the primary process, though the president’s supporters will mount a write-in campaign. That gives Phillips a leg up.The state offers the “lowest cost, highest probability opportunity to surprise people and to demonstrate my campaign”, he said.Since Phillips launched his campaign in October, after months of trying to goad more prominent Democrats to challenge the sitting president, he’s been met with a chorus of simple questions about who he is and why he’s doing this.His answer is simple: “Because Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump.”Phillips’ presence in the race doesn’t really change that fact at this point – polls in New Hampshire show him far behind Biden. Recent polls back up his assertion, though, that the Democratic president isn’t going into the election year strong. Neither Biden nor Trump are well liked by the electorate, despite the seeming inevitability of the repeat matchup.“You can’t win a national election with 33% approval numbers,” Phillips said, referring to a recent Pew Research Center survey on Biden’s job rating. “And I don’t understand why I’m the only one out of 250-some Democrats in Congress to simply say the quiet part out loud: he cannot win the next election.”On policy, the two Democrats don’t widely differ. Phillips’ campaign isn’t an insurgent progressive campaign designed to move the centrist president further left. The main difference is a visual one – Phillips is much younger than Biden and Trump. He’s called for a new generation to lead the country forward.In that sense, though, his campaign draws attention to one of Biden’s weakest points, though Phillips argues the age differences are “pretty obvious” and not something he’s actively pointed out. “Neither of us can change our ages or stages of life.”By running a campaign against Biden, some Democrats fear Phillips is emphasizing the president’s flaws during a vulnerable time, ultimately further hurting Democrats’ ability to beat Trump in 2024. Phillips finds this notion “absurd”, saying that his presence should help Biden if it gets the president to come out and campaign or debate, to show himself to the voters more.While Biden’s poor polling animated Phillips’ campaign, the congressman has worked to fill in some of the details about who he’d be as a president. His political career has been short: three terms in Congress after flipping a longtime GOP seat in suburban Minnesota. He’s keen on pragmatic, bipartisan politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of now, the economy and affordability have risen as a primary focus for him, with plans to address the rising costs of healthcare, housing, education and daily expenses forthcoming, he said.He’s also changed his mind on one big issue after hearing “such horrifying, heartbreaking stories” from people since taking office: he now supports Medicare for All, as opposed to just a public option. He thinks it’s an issue on which Republicans and Democrats could work together.On the Israel-Hamas war, perhaps Biden’s weakest point within his own party at the moment, Phillips doesn’t track too far off from Biden. He is a “passionate supporter of the state of Israel” who believes the country has a right to defend itself and that the US and its allies should unify to support Israel. He also has an “equal affection for Palestinians” and believes they deserve self-determination and a state. He has argued for the release of hostages and a concurrent ceasefire.“I intend to be the first Jewish American president in our history,” he said. “And I want to be the one that signs documents that help found the Palestinian state for the first time because we cannot continue to allow this cycle of bloodshed and misery and destruction to occur any longer.”To get anywhere near the presidency, Phillips would need to overcome a Democratic party already working hard to re-elect its incumbent president. Some states, such as Florida and North Carolina, have already decided not to hold primaries for president.The structural odds bother Phillips, who sees them as anti-democratic. The political culture on both sides forces people to stay in line rather than challenge the status quo if they want to keep their careers in elected office, he said. He knows his congressional career is done because of his presidential run – he’s not running for his seat in Minnesota again. And if he loses, he presumes his political career is over too. It will be worth it to him to try to keep Trump out of the White House, he said.“We need more people willing to torpedo their careers in Congress like I did, to ensure that we do not torpedo the entire country,” he said.Given the president’s age, though, staying in the race longer could be a hedge in case something were to happen to Biden. In that instance, it’s still tough to see how Phillips would be the best man for the job, though he’d be the only mainstream Democrat who had the primary calendar on his side.Still, he hopes more Democrats will jump in the presidential race. “The water is warm. Come on in. That’s what I’ve been asking for for many, many months,” Phillips said. “It gets to a point where doing so gets harder and harder because of state ballot access. Already, I think 15 states are too late to get on the ballot. So yes, I wish that would have happened months ago.” More

The US supreme court on Friday rejected a request by the special counsel to expeditiously decide whether Donald Trump has immunity from federal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, before a lower appeals court issued its own judgment.The one sentence denial means the case is returned to the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, where a three-judge panel is scheduled to hear oral arguments in January, and the case against Trump remains frozen pending the outcome of the appeal.In declining to leapfrog the lower court and fast-track the appeal, the supreme court handed a crucial and potentially far-reaching victory to Trump as he seeks to delay as much as possible his trial, currently scheduled for next March in federal district court in Washington.The decision almost certainly slows down Trump’s federal election interference case. Even if the DC circuit rules against Trump quickly, the former president can first ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and then has 90 days to lodge a final appeal to the supreme court.Trump was indicted in June by the special counsel Jack Smith for conspiring to impede the peaceful transfer of power, but sought to have the charges thrown out by contending he could not be prosecuted for actions he undertook as president that were related to his official duties.The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, ranging from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.This month, his motion was rejected by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan. That set the stage for Trump, who had always expected the motion to fail, to lodge an appeal that would stay the case while the DC circuit considered the matter.Obtaining the stay was always part of Trump’s strategy – he is seeking delay because if he wins re-election before the trial occurs, he could arrange to have the charges dismissed – and his lawyers were counting on a lengthy appeals process that would buy the time.The strategy, according to people close to Trump’s legal team, involved Trump going to the supreme court and securing additional weeks or months of delay – only after weeks of delay before the DC circuit.But prosecutors attempted to preempt Trump’s ploy by asking the supreme court to bypass the DC circuit and resolve the immunity question directly. In court filings, the special counsel suggested keeping the March trial date was in the public interest.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe request from prosecutors that the nation’s highest court rule on a case before judgment by an appeals court – and force Trump to contend with the Supreme Court plank of his delay strategy months earlier than he anticipated – was unusual but underscored the gravity of the moment.On Friday, the court essentially sided with Trump, who had argued the day before for the special counsel’s petition to be denied, arguing on procedural grounds that prosecutors had no basis to appeal a trial court ruling that was favorable to them and where the government had not suffered any harm.The denial, appellate experts said, underscored the peril of allowing trial prosecutors to help frame issues before the supreme court, instead of having the solicitor general’s office – which normally argues on behalf of the government – refine arguments to the sensibilities of the justices.The emergency petition on the Trump immunity question did not involve the solicitor general’s office. Although the filing was signed by former deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, it also included the special counsel himself and two of his deputies, JP Cooley and James Pearce. More

Two Republican officials in Arizona got charged for delaying approval of 2022 election results – and GOP state lawmakers vowed to retaliate against the Democratic attorney general who filed the charges.Rudy Giuliani faces millions in damages for defaming two Georgia election workers in 2020 – and continued to defame them outside the courtroom.Donald Trump himself is on trial in four jurisdictions, in part because of election subversion – and and gives public speeches on how he intends to take down his political enemies if he wins again.Such is the dichotomy of American democracy at this moment: attempts to hold election deniers accountable for their actions are met with doubling down and more intense election denial.Ahead of the 2020 elections, Trump foreshadowed his plan to claim the election was stolen if he lost, which his supporters often explained away as campaign trail bluster. But he and his followers took their election lies farther than many feared, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. Biden only made it to the White House because of a handful of steadfast Republicans in key states who refused to bow to Trump’s attempts to overthrow Biden’s victory in the vote.These day, rather than subsiding after a series of bruising losses, adherence to election denialism is now a major flank of the mainstream Republican party. Trump’s most ardent supporters, some of whom now hold public office, have even sought to reclaim the term: they agree they are in fact election deniers, and proud of it. Their continued attempts to undermine elections since, combined with vulnerabilities that haven’t been addressed, mean the US could be in for even worse this time around.That is, if Trump loses. If he wins, he’s vowed to use the Department of Justice to pursue vengeance against those who tried to hold him accountable. He’s called his political opponents “vermin”, using the language of authoritarian dictators.And if the urgent threat to American democracy extends from the most local levels of government to the courts and up to the presidency, it also comes at a time of fractured views of reality, with rampant rumor-spreading on social media.The potential for harassment, threats and violence has only grown since 2020. What was ad-hoc then is now well-worn: overturning an election in 2024 depends on more believers, especially those in powerful positions, using tactics that are well documented because they have been happening across the country for several years. The playbook is, in essence, already public.Threats from inside the governmentWhile just a few Republicans kept democracy intact in 2020, in 2024 a few could also dismantle it.Some prominent election deniers, like Kari Lake in Arizona and Tim Michels in Wisconsin, lost races that would have given them oversight of elections. But others won. One report by States United Democracy Center estimates that election deniers in 17 states are in top positions – like governor, attorney general or secretary of state – that oversee elections in some way.That means some who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged will help finalize results in 2024, making it much more possible for a presidential election to be overturned. If nothing else, they will almost certainly push delays in certifying election results (once a perfunctory process).At lower, more direct levels of government, where it’s also easier for the far right to find a friendly ear in elected office, election deniers could refuse to send results to their states – putting local votes in jeopardy and threatening the accuracy of election results. In 2022, local Republicans officials wouldn’t certify results in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. In Colorado in late 2023, the state Republican party told local boards not to sign off on statewide elections from November because the system was “rigged” and the process “disastrous”.A key tool of election denialism is the idea of hand counts. Grassroots groups have traveled the country since 2020 to spread word about pushing for full hand counts of ballots, finding allies like Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman, and Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock executive.Most counties do hand count a small percentage of ballots to audit machine results, but very few do it all by hand. Some officials who tried to hand count against state law in a rural Arizona county were recently charged with felonies. In California, far-right officials in Shasta county instigated a hand count, but pulled back because of a state law banning it.Despite these failures, Telegram channels push for hand counts remain active. People show up monthly at the Cochise county board meetings in Arizona, still calling for a hand count next year. Georgia saw more hand recounts in its 2023 elections despite a lack of problems with machine counting.Other election denial tactics tie up the government through excessive public records requests. One small county in Georgia recently shared that it’s struggling to keep up with the huge increase in records requests, filed by rightwing groups purportedly to try to prove fraud.And there will undoubtedly be more frivolous lawsuits. In his effort to overturn his loss in 2020, Trump filed 62 lawsuits across state and federal courts – all but one of which failed. Some groups will probably file mass voter challenges claiming a broad swath of voters aren’t eligible to cast ballots, like True the Vote did in 2020.Some Republican-led states also now have “election integrity units” that investigate claims of fraud. These units have not found evidence of mass voter fraud; instead, they mostly dig up routine instances of one-off frauds, like voting for a dead person or in multiple places. Nonetheless, the units could be weaponized in 2024 to take on broader investigations at the behest of election-denying politicians.Beyond the elections themselves, judges could further hinder anti-discrimination laws. A federal appeals court issued a shocking ruling that would hobble civil rights groups’ ability to sue over violations to voting rights laws – removing the way voting rights laws get enforced in the courts, and putting responsibility solely on the government to bring these lawsuits instead. Another Republican-led appellate court, meanwhile, is considering a threat to the Voting Rights Act itself – the landmark achievement of the civil rights movement that makes racial discrimination in voting illegal.Rampant misinformation leads to harassment and threatsWith a proliferation of social media platforms, and the increasing politicization of fact-checking, it’ll be harder to slow down viral rumors that can affect elections – with the potential for real-world harassment or even violence at the polls.Take the example of drop boxes. An effort to “watch” them in 2020 saw people camping out at polling stations in Arizona, sometimes holding guns, and intimidating voters. A judge eventually barred drop-box watchers from taking photos or videos of voters and from bringing weapons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut an ongoing misinformation campaign culminated in the movie 2000 Mules, which inaccurately attempted to use cellphone location data to show people allegedly visiting non-profits then dropping off ballots – claiming, with zero proof, that there was some kind of massive ballot-trafficking scheme happening. That, too, ensnared real people and cast them as criminals: one man in Georgia sued after the movie claimed he was a ballot “mule” based on footage of him dropping off ballots entirely legally.In perhaps the highest-profile case of abusing election workers, the Trump ally and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was just found liable for $148.1m for lies about two former election workers in Georgia, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who testified their lives were torn apart after Giuliani and others falsely cast them at the center of a voter fraud conspiracy theory. Freeman had to move and no longer feels comfortable even using her name; Moss is too anxious to leave the house.Despite the lawsuit victory, many elections workers still feel the heat. Some have been harassed out of their jobs, or had their lives threatened – as of August, 14 people had been charged with such death threats. During the 2022 midterms, elections staff in Arizona’s Maricopa county saw messages that they would “swing for treason” and wishing them to “get cancer”. This year, elections offices in several states were sent letters containing fentanyl. Many have had to train workers to prepare for harassment.The onslaught has caused more elections workers to leave their jobs, creating high turnover that means more potential for mistakes by inexperienced people – such as in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne county, where turnover played a role in several election incidents caused by human error. These mistakes can provide further ammunition for election deniers. But at the most basic level, people may be hesitant to work as poll workers or other election helpers – critical posts for the conduct of successful elections.Social media landscape makes lies harder to stopThat same fractured social media landscape has given the far right – including big personalities such as Trump, Lindell and Steve Bannon – platforms like Telegram, Rumble and Truth Social to post content that might be flagged on more established media platforms. This creates an information ecosystem that’s outside the mainstream and difficult to track, and where heated election claims run wild. Podcasts, too – especially Bannon’s – have huge audiences and serve as a launching pad for organizing the movement and sharing plans for elections. Lindell, the pillow salesman, goes on Bannon’s podcast to share “the plan”, his step-by-step manifesto to “prevent” the stealing of elections, and to hawk his pillows.Larger platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter), have become less interested in monitoring and stopping election misinformation, creating more potential for it to spread during a contentious election year. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, decimated its workforce, including factcheckers, leaving the site vulnerable to increasing misinformation. He also allowed people previously banned from the platform, including conservative operatives such as Project Veritas and the disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to have their accounts back. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, now will allow political ads to claim the 2020 election was rigged or stolen; YouTube has reversed itself and now won’t take down content that makes false claims of fraud.In previous election cycles, researchers would flag misinformation and platforms would sometimes respond: for example, by amending fact-check notices to untrue statements. Government employees would sometimes flag these kinds of posts to tech companies as well – a practice that has come under intense scrutiny by conservatives in Congress, with the Republican Jim Jordan subpoenaing researchers about their work on misinformation. Courts have also restricted how the government can interact with social media companies in this way.Combined, it has a chilling effect – hindering researchers’ work on misinformation, the government’s ability to respond and social media companies’ incentives to intervene. Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher, claims Harvard fired her because she was critical of Facebook.What comes next is already happeningOn the right, the narrative of 2020 as a stolen election never ended. Some of those who lost still haven’t conceded, and the contest for US House speaker swirled around who was far-right enough, with “election integrity” and allegiance to Trump considered key criteria.There have, however, been attempts to hold election subversion accountable.Trump faces four court cases, both criminal and civil, in several states and at the federal level.States are investigating or have charged a number of Republicans, including some lawmakers and party officials, in the “fake elector” scheme, where people sent false electoral votes to Congress naming Trump not Biden as the winner. Defamation lawsuits proliferate. Lawyers who continually file lawsuits devoid of facts have been sanctioned across the country and face investigations by their state bar organizations.The most ardent believers in election fraud won’t see criminal charges or big defamation damages decisions as evidence the narrative was wrong – just as further proof of a conspiracy. Nor have all the lies seemed to help the one party that didn’t attempt to steal the election, the Democrats: polls show Biden trailing Trump and his approval rating tanking over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.A plague of voter apathy could deliver Trump back to the White House. If he wins, his campaign of retribution will begin, weaponizing the federal government for his personal aims. If he loses, the plan to overturn the results kicks off again – and this time, it could work. More

George Anthony Devolder Santos was born in 1988 with a serious congenital condition which means he is incapable of feeling shame or embarrassment. I’m not sure what the name of the affliction is or whether it’s recognized by the medical establishment – but many of his former colleagues in government seem to suffer from the same thing.Still, the disgraced New York Republican, who was expelled from Congress three weeks ago and pleaded not guilty in October to a total of 23 federal felony charges ranging from wire fraud to money laundering, clearly has an extreme case. Santos, who was elected to represent parts of Long Island and Queens last year, has been dogged by controversy throughout his short political career. It turns out he lied about pretty much everything in his life – including his mother surviving 9/11.Every time he’s been called out on his lies and alleged frauds, however, he’s shrugged his shoulders and acted as if people were making a fuss out of nothing. “It’s the vulnerability of being human,” he said loftily when challenged on his claims to have an extensive property portfolio, for example. “I am not embarrassed by it.”Santos, who is just the sixth person ever to be expelled from Congress, doesn’t seem particularly fazed by his ousting either. I don’t know about you, but if I’d been kicked out of Congress – and was facing a 23-count federal indictment that alleged, inter alia, that I’d stolen campaign donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards for things like Botox without their knowledge – I’d probably feel a tad sheepish. I’d probably lie low for a bit and try to avoid doing anything that brought undue attention to myself or got me into even more legal trouble.Santos, however? He’s busy trying to reinvent himself. He hasn’t let disgrace bring him down. Instead, Santos, the first non-incumbent gay Republican ever elected to Congress, seems to be busy trying to turn himself into some kind of ironic gay icon and is leaning into his camp and outlandish persona as far as he possibly can.He recently announced an X subscription where he promises to “spill tea” on Congress for just $7 a month, for example. He also signed up as a “former congressional ‘Icon’!” to Cameo, a website that offers access to personalized messages from celebrities. For a mere $200-$500 you can get a video message from him.Are people actually paying for this? I’m afraid they are! A friend of the Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt, who is bisexual and a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, hired Santos – who has endorsed several anti-trans policies – to send her a message of support which was widely shared.“Be yourself unapologetically,” Santos said in the video, seemingly oblivious that he had supported laws that would stop people doing just that. “Just love yourself. Just make sure that you don’t buy into the hate and stand your ground and don’t let them force you out. Don’t let them bully you. You do you, girl. I’m cheering for ya.”Then there was this week’s much-anticipated interview with Ziwe Fumudoh, a comedian famous for her deadpan interviews. Santos used drag slang like “boots the house down” (an expression of enthusiasm) multiple times throughout the interview in a seeming attempt to remind us all that he may be a disgrace and a Republican but he’s also gay, so he can’t be all bad, ya know?While he may be familiar with gay slang, Santos doesn’t seem to know much about LGBTQ+ history. Ziwe quizzed Santos on civil rights icons (the former politician once compared himself to Rosa Parks) and he admitted he had no idea who James Baldwin or Harvey Milk were. He also didn’t seem familiar with the transgender activist Marsha P Johnson.What about Santos’s own gay history? Namely allegations that Santos, a supporter of anti-LGBTQ+ policies like Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, had been a drag queen in the past. That was true, Santos said, but only for a day. “If I was a career drag queen then, like everybody likes to claim, then I must be a myth of a drag queen now … I wear far more makeup today.”The most important question Ziwe asked was probably her most earnest. “What could we do to get you to go away?” she demanded towards the end, speaking for a nation. “Stop inviting me to your gigs,” Santos replied quickly. “But you can’t. Because people want the content.”Santos may be fond of fiction but, for once, he was speaking the complete truth. You can be forgiven for pretty much anything in America if you generate entertaining enough content. You can lie, you can cheat, you can commit all manner of sins – but if you draw eyeballs and generate headlines you will probably be forgiven. You might even become president! And you certainly won’t go broke. The talkshow appearances, the book deals, the invitations to Dancing on the Stars will come.That said, there are a few things that do tend to kill your career in America. Espousing pro-Palestinian views being a major one. Ziwe, in fact, joked about that herself. “Do you support a ceasefire or are you afraid of losing your Hollywood representation?” she asked Santos at one point during the 18-minute interview.The former congressman, in case you’re interested, made it very clear that he did not support a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have died. What a strange world we live in, where calling for a ceasefire can get you cancelled faster than using campaign money on shopping sprees and lying your way into Congress.Ziwe is hilarious but, despite the laughs, the interview with Santos ultimately left a bad taste in one’s mouth. You can’t “gotcha” a guy like Santos. You can’t embarrass him. You can’t expose him. You can’t unsettle him. At one point, for example, Ziwe asked: “What advice do you have for young diverse people with personality disorders considering a career in politics?” Most people would get flustered. Santos just paused for a while then said, “You’re cute.”Ultimately, none of this is cute. Platforming a guy like Santos, a bigot who thrives on the oxygen of attention, only helps to rehabilitate him. We may think we’re laughing at the ex-congressman but with every view his interviews rack up, it’s clear that the joke is on us.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

Donald Trump has the tacit blessing of senior Republican figures as he seeks to put border security front and center of the 2024 election by deploying fascistic language to fire up his support base, political analysts warn.The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 has called for a sharp crackdown on immigration and asserted at a weekend rally that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.The comment drew on words similar to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his autobiography and manifesto Mein Kampf.But, despite widespread condemnation of Trump’s remarks, some top Republicans have shied away from criticizing the former US president, who is the overwhelming favorite to win the party’s nod to face off against Joe Biden in the race for the White House.Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right … I think the president has a way of talking sometimes I disagree with. But he actually delivered on the border.” Nicole Malliotakis, a New York congresswoman, told CNN: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning’, though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”And this week Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, signed a law that allows police to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally and permits judges to order them to leave the US. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said: “It is very much in line with what many Republicans like to do or tend to do, which is demonise immigrants and also dehumanise immigrants.”Activists note how the Republican party has veered right with Trump. Maria Teresa Kumar, president and chief executive of Voto Latino, a grassroots political organisation, said via email: “Trump may say the quiet parts loud, but he’s far from alone. There were members of the Republican party not long ago who understood the need for bringing the country together. [President George W] Bush, a Texan, sought immigration reform.“Today, we see elected Republicans use rhetoric and policies for political expediency at the cost of unification. There is no doubt that we are living in a multicultural democracy – the first in history. Instead of embracing this superpower that will serve us well on the world stage, they choose division that hurts millions of fellow citizens.”Immigration is one of the most divisive problems in American politics, and bipartisan reform attempts have repeatedly failed over the past two decades. On Tuesday leaders of the Senate said a deal to bolster border security and provide additional aid to Ukraine is unlikely to come together soon.The White House’s willingness to consider concessions, and even a revival of Trump-like policies, has drawn fierce condemnation from progressives in Congress and activists who say the ideas would gut the asylum system and spark fears of deportations from immigrants already living in the US.Kumar warned against policymaking based on fearmongering. “Right now, extremists have taken the issue hostage, and they are making a commonsense solution impossible. The current immigration debate is way out of step with where Americans are on the issue, and I expect this will drive Latinos and moderates to the polls in 2024.”While Trump’s language echoes Nazis in its extremism, it arrives in the context of years of Republicans shifting the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable. Tom Tancredo, a former congressman from Colorado, pushed for strict immigration laws and enforcement and was accused of ties to white nationalist groups.Steve King, a former congressman from Iowa, once compared immigrants to dogs and defended the terms “white nationalism” and “white supremacy”. (King has recently campaigned with the rightwing Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in Iowa.) Nativist dog whistles have now been replaced by a totalitarian bullhorn.Joe Walsh, elected to Congress in the populist Tea Party wave of 2010, said of Trump’s recent comments: “As someone who used to say shit like that too much, I know that this issue animates the Republican party base better than any other issue, so Trump will keep saying shit like this because it works.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than seven in 10 Republicans (72%) say newcomers are a threat, compared with a far lower percentage of independents (43%) and Democrats (21%), according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington. Two in three Republicans agree with the “great replacement” theory, which posits an elite conspiracy to supplant and disempower white people.Walsh, now a podcast host and outspoken Trump critic, added: “The Republican party base is older and white. You can scare the shit out of them by talking about all these brown and Black people coming from all these different countries into America and it’s going to change America. That scares the white party base more than anything.”But while Democrats abhor Trump’s choice of words, some may be vulnerable to the underlying message. As record numbers cross the US-Mexico border, seven in 10 voters disapprove of the president’s performance on immigration, according to a Monmouth University opinion poll released this week. It is no longer an issue for border states alone as thousands of migrants are bussed to major cities.Walsh commented: “Democrats better watch out because this issue – not Trump’s language – is a huge vulnerability for Joe Biden and the Democrats. There are a lot of people outside of the Maga [Make America Great Again] base who care about our border but are too afraid to say anything. This issue has resonance.”Democrats are on the defensive. At a press conference, Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, conceded: “What Donald Trump said and did was despicable, but we do have a problem at the border and Democrats know we have to solve that problem, but in keeping with our principles.”For many it is cause for alarm ahead of next year’s presidential election, expected to be a rematch between Biden and Trump. John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “What had been evenly balanced between Democrats and Republicans on the border and on undocumented workers has shifted now towards Trump.“He is defining the issue. The stance on border security is much more defined and much more the dominant position than the issue behind fairness, equity, even the role of federal government. Those who care about undocumented workers are just not in the mainstream any more.” More

Should there be a political price to pay for a president who refuses to engage in a peaceful transfer of power and incites a violent coup to stay in office?Common sense says yes.As does a majority vote of the Colorado supreme court. But since their stunning ruling this week that Donald Trump may not appear on their state’s primary ballot, many a lawyer and pundit is arguing otherwise.They say, for example, that it’s not the role of a court but of the voters to decide a matter of such import. They don’t seem to recall that the voters did decide in 2020 when they elected Joe Biden, but that Trump refused to accept that decision and did everything in his power to reverse it.Others allow that the constitution does provide that insurrection is disqualifying but they ponder whether Trump – without a legal conviction – really fits that definition. And in some cases, these critics twist themselves into verbal knots to express their doubt.“I generally say that Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term in office,” wrote Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. “Insurrection,” he notes, may be useful shorthand for Trump’s role but it’s too imprecise to accomplish what the Colorado jurists say it does.President Biden sounded sensible when asked by a reporter if Trump is an insurrectionist. “It’s self-evident … he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero.”But even Biden, hardly a disinterested party, admits another obvious factor: the US supreme court will make the ultimate decision.The smart money seems to be on the court’s ruling in Trump’s favor.Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for the Nation, predicted that the highest court will overturn Colorado 8-1, that the opinion will be written by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan, and only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will dissent.“John Roberts is probably standing outside Elena Kagan’s office like [actor John Cusack] with a jukebox right now,” Mystal quipped, alluding to the iconic pleading-for-attention scene in the 1989 movie Say Anything. “He needs her for cover for what he’s about to do … He’s playing a full 80s mixtape.”Other anti-Trumpers remain more hopeful, for some plausible reasons. One is that that conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, before he rose to his current lofty position, once wrote that states may and should protect the integrity of the political process by keeping candidates off the ballot if they are “constitutionally prohibited from assuming office”.I’m no constitutional lawyer but Trump’s post-election actions like inciting an insurrection and pushing a fake-electors scheme seem strong enough to fit that bill. But, of course, there are ways to justify the opposite.“A serious and careful opinion that reaches a reasonable conclusion,” was how the UCLA law professor Rick Hasen characterized the Colorado ruling. But he noted that, whether on the merits or on doctrinal grounds, the supreme court certainly can find grounds to disagree.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHasen calls it imperative that the court move quickly: “Voters need to know if the candidate they are supporting for president is eligible.” A later determination of eligibility, especially if it were to involve congressional Democrats, “would be tremendously destabilizing”.For me, it comes down to this. Trump is an anti-democracy candidate, and his actions, over the past eight years, have proven that, time after time.Too many Americans are so inured to his firehose of outrages that they don’t see as clearly as the Colorado jurists do that this man now should not be eligible for the leadership of the free world. Mainstream media’s horserace fixation, and rightwing media’s relentless propaganda, has made that blindness worse. (On Thursday morning, Fox News offered this mind-blowing chyron: “GOP leaders suggest removing Biden from red-state ballots over border crisis.”)Even if the Colorado justices don’t prevail, I am grateful to them for stating some obvious truths: that Trump has gone far beyond the limits of what’s acceptable in a candidate for highest office. That the checks and balances of the branches of government exist for a reason. That Trump doesn’t have to be convicted of insurrection, though he may eventually be, to be disqualified via the 14th amendment of the US constitution.After all he’s done – especially in the shocking wake of the 2020 election – Trump is clearly unfit for office.Whatever the outcome, having that recognized by a well-respected state court is a victory for common sense and integrity.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist More